


damsel in distress

by Yersina



Series: leap before you look [3]
Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Hostage Situations, M/M, Minor Violence, Sick Fic, Wedding Rings, these tags make sense in context i swear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-08
Updated: 2020-07-08
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:34:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25116982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yersina/pseuds/Yersina
Summary: “Hey there,” Minho says softly, ignoring Changbin miming the sound of vomiting in his ear. He flicks Jisung in the forehead before pulling out a knife so he can start sawing at the zipties holding Jisung’s hands together. “When are you going to learn not to run into trouble like that?”“Why would I stop when I know I have you to save me?” Minho glances up in time to catch Jisung’s cheesy wink in his direction. “My knight in shining armor.”-(or, 5 times Minho saves Jisung and 1 time Jisung saves Minho.)
Relationships: Han Jisung | Han/Lee Minho | Lee Know
Series: leap before you look [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1799347
Comments: 6
Kudos: 196
Collections: MINSUNG BINGO: Round One





	damsel in distress

**Author's Note:**

> the promised light-hearted sequel! this fic also stands alone from the rest of the series, but there is a slight reference to thing with feathers in the last section. should still be understandable without reading it though!
> 
> this takes place after things with feathers and sometime concurrently(-ish) with 50% headache, a couple years after minho joins the gang.
> 
> written for the [minsung trope bingo](minsungbingo)! prompts: weddings, fake/pretend relationships, sick fic

I.

“Take a left here.” Minho obediently turns, walking casually down the hotel hallway and doing his best not to look out of place. “Should be room 419.”

Minho hums in reply, tapping the leaf of an artfully placed plant as he passes. There’s one person at the end of the hallway, a white hotel towel draped over their shoulders and dripping water over the pristine carpet. Minho nods to them politely before pulling a key card out of his pocket, tapping it to the reader above the door handle. He hopes his smooth movements don’t betray the apprehension tightening his chest or the sigh of relief he lets out when the light blinks green.

“I’m in.” 

“HAH!” Changbin crows over the coms. “I _told_ you I could figure out the keycard system.” 

There’s only one person inside, bound to the hotel desk chair and blindfolded. “Is that Changbin-hyung?” he asks, looking entirely too at ease for someone who's effectively incapacitated. “I can feel his smugness from over here.”

Minho snorts a laugh before he can stop himself. “You hear that, Changbin?” 

“You’re telling me they didn’t bother to gag him?” There’s a clack of keyboard keys that Minho assumes is Changbin making sure that the security cameras won’t remember them. “After hearing him run his mouth, they _really_ didn’t bother to gag him?”

Minho gently pulls the blindfold off of Jisung, careful not to tug on any hairs in the process. He smiles when Jisung blinks rapidly at him, squinting against the sunlight pouring into the room. “Hey there,” he says softly, ignoring Changbin miming the sound of vomiting in his ear. He flicks Jisung in the forehead before pulling out a knife so he can start sawing at the zipties holding Jisung’s hands together. “When are you going to learn not to run into trouble like that?”

“Why would I stop when I know I have you to save me?” Minho glances up in time to catch Jisung’s cheesy wink in his direction. “My knight in shining armor.”

“I’m actually going to throw up if you guys keep this up,” Changbin mutters. Minho’s halfway through the one binding Jisung’s left ankle when there’s a conspicuous pause in the ever-present clacking. “Uh, guys…” 

“Oh, did I forget to mention that the guy said he’d be back with reinforcements in five minutes?” The grin plastered to Jisung’s face belies the bad news and Minho can feel an echoing smile growing on his own lips. “Not to brag or anything, but he did say something about needing twenty people to make sure I’m actually dead.”

“This would have been better information to have _before,”_ Changbin gripes. 

Jisung staggers out of the chair as soon as Minho gets him free, shaking his limbs and jumping in place to get his blood flow back to normal. He shoves the earbud that Minho hands him into his ear and checks the gun Minho passes him just as easily. “Well, excuse me if I was a little bit more preoccupied with other things.”

“‘Other things’—like making kissy faces at Minho-hyung?” Minho can practically hear the eyebrow raise accompanying the accusation. He blows a kiss at Jisung just to prove that he can and their chorus of laughter makes Changbin groan. “Oh god, you just did it now, didn’t you? It wasn’t a suggestion, you idiot.”

“Hey!” Minho yells. “I’m offended that you think that I wouldn’t do that to Jisung on my own.”

“It’s for the protection of my own mind!” Changbin curses. “Listen, I’d love to keep shouting at you, but they’re almost on you, so you better get a move on.”

“No time to escape down the other end of the hallway.” Minho’s almost about to protest when he sees Jisung’s eyes dart to the balcony meaningfully. 

“What are you talking about—”

“You’re right,” Minho agrees, talking over Changbin. “I guess the only way out is through.”

“That’s _not_ what that expression means—”

Both of them ignore Changbin as they shove open the sliding door and peer down from the balcony. “You’re lucky that I’ve mostly gotten over my fear of heights,” Minho comments, staring down at the four floor drop to the concrete sidewalk below. The vestiges of nervousness churn in his stomach, but he pushes that aside to look at Jisung. “So, what’s the plan?”

Jisung flashes him a bright grin. “Here’s what we’re gonna do."

II.

“Hyung,” Jisung hisses into the phone.

“Hey, Jisung,” Minho replies absentmindedly, staring through a fogged up pane of glass at individually packaged ice cream. “Aren’t you busy right now? Why are you calling?” He slides the door open and reaches for a red bean flavored popsicle before hesitating. “Red bean or mung bean flavor?”

“Why are you even asking—mung bean all the way.” Minho grabs the mung bean popsicle instead and heads to the counter to pay, smiling fondly at Jisung’s sputtering. “That’s not what I called for!” 

The cashier gives him an amused look and chuckles goodnaturedly when Minho shrugs and hands him cash. “What did you call about, then?”

Jisung sighs frustratedly into the receiver, breath crackling loudly. “You know how I was supposed to stake out the guy that Chan-hyung told me to watch?”

“Mhm.” Minho takes his popsicle and his change from the cashier and unwraps it on his way out, balancing his phone between his ear and his shoulder. “You run into problems?” He hums contentedly at the taste of sweet mung bean. “You were right about the mung bean, by the way.”

“Of course I was,” Jisung huffs. “Mung bean is always superior—”

Suddenly, Jisung goes conspicuously silent. Minho strains his ears for any sign of danger on the other end of the line, balanced on a hair’s breadth of suspense, which means he hears the sound of a toilet flushing loud and clear. “Jisungie…” He doesn’t bother to hide his giggling. “Are you calling me from the bathroom?” He waits patiently, finding a seat on a wall surrounding a cluster of flowering bushes, hoping he doesn’t look too idiotic with a popsicle in one hand, phone in the other, and a grin plastered to his face. “I miss you too, baby, but calling me from the bathroom is a bit over the top, don’t you think?”

“I’d hit you right now if I could,” Jisung threatens as soon as Minho hears the dryer stop running. “I’d knock that stupid grin right off your face.”

“Aw, I love you too, sweetie.” He winks at the group of middle-aged women who eye him as they pass by, whispering and elbowing each other. 

“There was nowhere else I could go without it being suspicious!” 

“Sure, sure,” Minho agrees easily, chasing a drop of melting mung bean deliciousness before it melts onto his hand. “So, why are you calling me from a bathroom when Chan-hyung asked you to keep an eye on some very powerful men?”

Jisung groans and there’s a shifting of fabric that Minho takes to mean that Jisung is currently pacing. “I wasn’t thinking.”

“About?” Minho prompts. 

“Where he was going!” Jisung sounds borderline hysterical. “I just followed him like Chan-hyung told me too, and I got into the zone like you know I tend to do, and I honestly didn’t even notice until his henchmen started eyeing me weirdly.”

“Whoa, slow down.” Minho takes a bite of the popsicle, shivering at the coldness. “Where are you?”

“The Golden Rose.” 

Minho pauses mid-lick, mind slowly working through that information. “You’re at The Golden Rose.”

“Yeah.”

“At night.”

“Yep.”

“On a Saturday.”

“Yes, I know! Get with the program!” Jisung snaps. 

“Jisung,” Minho says slowly, lowering his popsicle because this is infinitely more interesting than ice cream. “I’m pretty sure the city declared The Golden Rose as one of the most romantic upscale restaurants this year.”

“I _know,”_ Jisung wails. “I just thought the candlelit tables were for ambiance!”

“Yeah,” Minho confirms. _“Romantic_ ambiance.”

“Fuck you,” Jisung says bitterly. “I’m hanging up.”

Minho laughs and bites off the rest of the ice cream so he can toss his popsicle stick in the trash. “Wait, no! Tell me more: did you notice when the guy’s date showed up or when the waiter asked you if you were still waiting for the other member of your party?” The mumble that Jisung gives in return is practically inaudible. “I’m sorry,” Minho sings. “Can you repeat that?”

“I _said,”_ Jisung says through gritted teeth, “I didn’t notice until the henchmen started giving me weird looks.”

“Poor Jisungie.” Minho pouts even though Jisung’s not there to see it. “So deprived of romance that you can’t even notice when other people are on a date.”

“And whose fault is that,” Jisung shoots back immediately. “I don’t think I can remember a single instance of a certain someone taking me out to dinner. Maybe I should just dump his ungrateful ass.”

“Well, you can’t do that.” Minho starts off down the street, strolling leisurely as he enjoys the warm summer air. “Who else is going to save you from your own stupidity?”

“I’m sure Chan-hyung would come help me. Or Felix.” 

“They probably would,” Minho concedes. “But do you want to have to explain to them a second time that you managed to walk into _The Golden Rose_ at seven at night on a weekend and didn’t put all the clues together until you were getting concerned about your safety?” 

The silence from Jisung’s end speaks for itself. “Just get your ass over here and help me.”

“So rude.” Minho shakes his head disapprovingly. “Where’s my ‘please’ and ‘thank you’? Don’t I get any gratitude for rushing to help you on my day off?”

“My gratitude is not punching your teeth in.”

“So disrespectful.” Minho waits for the pedestrian light to turn green, pondering the plan that’s beginning to take root in his mind. “How well do you think you can pull off ‘bewildered ex-boyfriend who’s being threatened by the new boyfriend of the scorned ex-girlfriend’?” 

“How well do you think you can pull off being straight?” Jisung challenges, glee clearly evident in his voice. “Bet you a thousand won that you’ll start cracking up first.”

“Five thousand that they’ll escort us off the premises.”

“Ten thousand that we end up on local news.”

“No bet,” Minho sighs. “Changbin’s definitely going to make it happen.” He stares up at the gilded sign elegantly declaring _The Golden Rose_ in swooping golden characters, complete with a red crystal rose in the corner. He curls his lip at the ostentatious show of wealth, wondering why anyone would bother with stiff formality and satin tablecloths when he could get perfectly good ramyeon at the family-owned restaurant down the street from their base. “You ready?”

“Give me your best shot.” 

Minho hangs up with a grin and pushes through the revolving glass door with a snarl on his lips. 

III.

“Sir, are you sure there’s nothing I can do to help you?” The tinny, inquisitive voice of the jeweler comes in loudly through the speakers in the van for the third time in the past five minutes. Minho shifts uneasily in his seat and winces when Chan shushes him at the loud creak it gives.

“Oh, no, sorry,” Jisung hurries to say. There’s a brief second of static from fabric sliding on fabric as he bows. “I’m sorry to be taking up so much of your time, it’s just that my partner’s picky about jewelry and I want to make sure that it’s perfect.”

“I understand that, sir,” the jeweler says patiently. “But unfortunately, we have a strict company policy against loitering. I would, of course, be happy to assist you with any of your decisions…?”

There’s a pause where Minho can almost audibly hear the gears in Jisung’s head turning. It’s only been fifteen minutes total since Jisung has stepped foot into the jewelry store, but Jisung’s the only one in the shop, and he’s been looking at their security more than their rings. “Well, if you insist.”

“I do.” Minho fidgets with his fingers as the silence drags on longer, stopping when Chan rests a hand on his knee to keep him from jiggling his leg up and down. “There are a lot of places to start with engagement rings—do you know what gemstone you might be looking for?”

“Oh, I’m not—” Jisung cuts himself off. “Uh, to be honest, I have no idea what gemstone I should be looking at.” Minho can perfectly visualize the embarrassed neck-scratching to go with the self-deprecating chuckles. “My girlfriend—I think she likes the color brown? A lot of her favorite things are brown-ish...” Minho hopes he’s trailing off because of how utterly nonsensical that line of reasoning is. “She wears a lot of black, too.” 

He can’t take it anymore. “My favorite color is green, you asshole,” he hisses into the intercom, and somewhere, far away, he can just _hear_ Changbin laughing his ass off. Somewhere not so far away, Chan is stifling his chuckles into his cupped hands. 

“Well, we have a couple of topaz rings over here, if you’d like to take a look at them,” the jeweler reports dutifully, even though doubt colors her voice. “Do you know what month she was born in? Many people like to buy rings by birthstone.” 

“Her birthday’s in late October—”

“Han Jisung,” Minho says slowly. “If you buy me a ring because of my birthstone, you’ll be looking at divorce papers before we can even get married.”

“—but I don’t think she’d like that idea,” Jisung quickly corrects. Minho spares a moment to glare at Chan who’s clinging to the edge of the tech console as he doubles over with laughter. “I think she might want something more meaningful than that?” Jisung’s voice tips up in a question, playing it off as confusion for the jeweler.

“I hate to see what ‘meaningful’ looks like for someone who thinks _brown_ is my favorite color,” Minho grumbles.

“If you’re looking for something meaningful, you could perhaps try the birthstone of the month when you two met?”

Minho rolls his eyes when Chan just keeps laughing, almost collapsed in a heap on the ground. He snatches the blueprints to the jewelry store off of his console and quickly pulls up a birthstone chart for comparison. “Say that we met in February,” he says before Jisung can stammer out a random guess. 

“I think we met sometime in February,” Jisung echoes. “It was super cold that day,” he continues, warming up to the idea. His voice takes on the enthusiastic, dramatic tone it does when he starts telling a story. “It’d just snowed the night before, you know? And the sidewalk was super icy, and I was running—to class.” Minho remembers this, though his version has Jisung running from the police, not late to class. “I slipped on a patch of ice and well, I guess you could say I fell head over heels for her, literally.” 

The jeweler giggles. “Sounds romantic.”

“Oh, not at all,” Jisung says with a laugh. “She took her sweet time laughing at me before helping me up and carting me off to the infirmary.” And Minho probably would’ve kept laughing if there hadn’t been people on their tail. “At least I got a date out of it. And now… the rest of our lives, hopefully.”

“She sounds lovely,” the jeweler says warmly, and Minho makes a face, because no one’s ever described him as _lovely_ before. Not even Jisung. “I’m sure she’ll say yes.”

“I hope so.”

“Well, our collection of amethyst rings are over here. We can have the rings resized for you, so you don’t need to worry about that. Do any of them catch your eye?” 

Jisung hems and haws over the amethyst rings for a few minutes before finally deciding that no, his girlfriend probably wouldn’t want a purple gemstone on her ring. Minho scans the blueprints for the positions of the other security cameras in the building, guiding Jisung through a tour of the shop and probably making him seem like the world’s most indecisive boyfriend in the process. 

“Thank you so much for your help and patience,” Jisung gushes once Minho tells them that they’re good to go. “I’ll be back for a ring soon.” 

“Just not in the way you’re thinking,” Minho can’t resist saying and hopes that Jisung is fighting a smile right now. 

“It was my pleasure,” the jeweler says. “I hope your girlfriend is happy with whichever ring you end up choosing.”

A few minutes later, Jisung is barreling into the back of the van and punching Minho on the arm. “Did you really need to make it so difficult? How am I supposed to explain why I need to look at the rubies, sapphires, _and_ the diamonds?” 

“I have expensive taste,” Minho sniffs. “Besides, it’s not my fault that they were all in different corners of the room.”

Jisung throws himself into Chan’s chair once the other climbs back into the driver’s seat. “I’m sure it had absolutely nothing to do with you enjoying me making up stories about my fake girlfriend.”

“My motives were entirely pure,” Minho retorts. “You would’ve had to bail on the surveillance if it weren’t for me.”

Jisung makes a sound of outrage. “You doubt my ability to bullshit?”

“I do when you try to say that _brown_ is my favorite color.”

Jisung groans again and slips down in his chair, looking to the world like he’s planning on sulking by himself until they reach their temporary base. Minho pokes him gently in the side until Jisung’s giggling and squirming away from the ticklish touch and chases him into the building when they arrive. 

Minho thinks the subject is dropped until after they pull off their heist of the jewelry store and he’s doing inventory, sorting everything into different piles to be sold to whichever people Chan says they should be sold to. He lingers on a set of diamond earrings that he knows wasn’t on their list and on a hunch, pulls out his phone and looks up a birthstone chart to double-check his guess. 

The earrings aren’t _quite_ his style, a little bigger and more noticeable than what he usually wears, and he knows the rest of the group will know as soon as they see either of their faces, but the beaming smile that Jisung gives when he sees Minho wearing them the next day is worth the endless teasing. 

IV.

“Wake up, princess.” 

Minho sputters at the ice cold bucket of water dumped on his head, blinking hard against the rivulets that flow down his face. He regrets it when he’s greeted with the sight of a menacing, scarred face inches away from his own, an ugly sneer twisting his lips into a snarl. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather go back to sleep.” He’s rewarded with a sharp backhand across his face, snapping his head to the side with the force of the blow. He runs his tongue over his teeth before he straightens back in his seat, mildly grateful that the thug didn’t manage to knock anything loose. “Careful, this job doesn’t come with health insurance.”

“Shut it, smart-ass.” Minho barely resists rolling his eyes at the man’s self-satisfied grin when Minho decides to indulge his request.

Hard handcuffs dig into his wrists when he tests his bonds and the ache in his shoulders tells him that he’s been in this position for at least an hour now. He’s surrounded by five other stony-faced men in what looks to be an abandoned factory (“How gauche,” his internal Changbin mutters), bright light streaming in through the cracks where the windows aren’t boarded up. Minho barely resists the urge to curse. It was barely dawn when he’d been knocked out.

“Hey, you,” he barks at one of the henchmen, interrupting whatever villainous monologue the main thug is spewing. He resists quirking a lopsided smile when the man startles visibly. _Gotcha._ The inexperienced ones always hold themselves a little differently. “What time is it?”

“I—what—”

“Don’t answer him,” the thug snaps. He shoves his face into Minho’s personal space, making Minho wince at his rancid breath. 

“I’m guessing they don’t provide dental insurance for you either?” The fist in his hair answers that question.

“Is this a joke to you?” the man whispers menacingly, shaking Minho like a ragdoll just to prove that he can. Minho _hates_ men like him, the ones who wield their power like a club because it’s there and it’s the only way they know how to make other people listen. At least it tells Minho that his chair isn’t bolted down. _A mistake on their part,_ he promises himself quietly and regrets that he doesn’t have the time to give these men the payback they deserve.

“You’re the ones who’re a joke.” He spends a split second enjoying the confused look on the thug’s face before spitting in his eye and cracking his head against the thug’s. 

Five minutes later, he shakes out the numb feeling in his hands as he steps over the bodies on the ground on his way to the door. “What does someone have to do to get a phone around here,” he mutters to himself, patting down his pockets and sighing when he finds that they’re completely empty. At least they did a good job of searching him. 

He clicks his tongue when he makes it all the way to the entrance without running into resistance. He’s almost offended at how careless the thugs were—shouldn’t he warrant stricter precautions? Sure, he’s not as well-known as Jisung or Hyunjin, but surely they should have spared more than _six_ people to guard him. None of them had even managed to get off a shot at him. 

An elbow to the face of the singular henchman guarding the door and he’s free, still sans phone. Thankfully, the first car he finds is a newer model, and another minute later sees him plowing down the chain link fence on his way out, GPS calmly relaying directions to him in a foreign language. 

_12:31PM,_ the clock on the console says and Minho curses. He floors it, the smell of burning rubber filling the car as Minho swerves out of the abandoned factory and onto an equally abandoned back road. He’s scheduled to pick up Jisung at one o’clock and even though Chan probably arranged for someone else to do it as soon as they figured out he was incapacitated, he’s not going to take that chance.

It’s 1:06PM when Minho spots a familiar figure sprinting wildly down the sidewalk, duffel bag clutched tightly in his hands and several security guards chasing after him. He pulls the car into an illegal U-turn and comes to a screeching halt in an alleyway, holding his breath and counting the seconds until Jisung flings the passenger door open and sprawls inside. 

“Go, go, go!” 

Minho takes off down the road, doing another illegal turn down a one-way street and doesn’t stop until he merges into traffic and slows down to blend in. 

Jisung pushes sweaty bangs off of his forehead and Minho can’t resist darting his eyes off of the road for a split second just to catch the wild, bright spark in Jisung’s eyes that always appears after a good heist. “Where were you? Wasn’t—” Minho glances at Jisung again when he stops abruptly, only to see his gaze glued to Minho’s face. “What happened to you?”

Confusion pulls Minho’s mouth into a frown until a soft touch ghosts down his cheek and presses lightly, making Minho hiss in pain. _Oh, that._ “It turns out some people don’t take it kindly when you talk back to them,” he remarks lightly. “Chan-hyung didn’t tell you I was out of commission?”

“He did, but it’s you.” Jisung shrugs, eyes still on the bruise that must be blooming on Minho’s face from the backhand he received earlier. “They get what they deserve?”

Minho thinks back to the seven men he left behind in that abandoned factory. “Yeah.” He turns ever so slightly to meet Jisung’s gaze and shares a fierce grin with him. “They did.” 

V.

“Noooooooooo,” Jisung moans into their hideous oval carpet that Hyunjin picked up for free off some person’s driveway in the US. He cranes his neck upwards painfully and gives Minho a teary look. “Hyung, save me.”

Seungmin shoves his face back into the carpet. “Nope, Minho-hyung can’t help you now. He won’t interfere with what he knows is justice.”

Jisung flails uselessly, trying desperately to gain some leverage and throw Seungmin off his back. “I said I’m sorry! I apologized! That’s more than I did when I accidentally used the last of Hyunjin’s shampoo that one time.”

“I still haven’t forgiven you for that,” Hyunjin hollers from the kitchen. He sticks his head out and points a chocolate covered spatula in their direction even though Jisung can’t see it. “You still owe me, by the way—that was shampoo that I got when we were in Belgium.”

“You’ve only reminded me a couple hundred times,” Jisung mutters into the carpet. He goes still for a moment before letting out an undignified ‘hurrrrrh’ as he tries to arch his back. Seungmin just clasps a hand around his neck and pushes him back down. “This is it. I’ve finally been betrayed by all of my friends. This is where I die.”

“This wouldn’t be a problem if you hadn’t stolen Seungmin’s last drumstick,” Minho points out, curled up on the couch with a book open in his lap and watching the chaos unfold. 

“I’m a thief!” Jisung shrieks, fighting the grip Seungmin has on him so he can glare up at Minho. “Stealing is what I _do.”_

“I was saving that for Jeongin,” Seungmin says. He chops Jisung gently on the back of the head. “We don’t steal from Jeongin.” 

“I said I was sorry!” The upset undertone that leaks into Jisung’s voice tells Minho that they’re veering from lighthearted teasing into the territory of genuine distress, so Minho calmly shuts his book, places it on the coffee table, and tackles Seungmin onto the floor with a strangled war cry.

Fortunately for Minho and his haphazard revenge plan, the rest of the group is so used to him yelling randomly that none of them even bother to check if anything’s wrong. It’s the perfect chance for Minho to wrestle Seungmin into a chokehold and roll around with him on the ground until Chan does a double take at them when he carries a huge bowl of popcorn into the living room.

“You know what, I’m not even going to question it,” he says, setting the bowl down and pinching the bridge of his nose. He stares at Minho curled around Seungmin on the ground, knuckles digging into the top of his head, and then at Jisung propped up on the couch laughing hysterically and Minho gets the pleasure of watching Chan visibly reconsidering every decision that led him to this point. “Jisung, Seungmin—Jeongin gets to choose the movie this time. Minho, let Seungmin go, please.”

Minho untangles his limbs from Seungmin and sits up, but not before pinching his cheek affectionately with a coo, laughing when Seungmin pushes him away irritably. “Seungminnie is finally growing some muscle. I actually had some trouble that time,” he says wistfully, daintily dabbing away a fake tear. “I’m so proud.”

Seungmin settles on the couch and flicks a piece of popcorn in Minho’s direction, laughing when Minho tries and fails to catch it in his mouth. “You’re just getting weaker, hyung.” He laughs louder when Minho raises a fist in his direction, falling back into the cushions and raising his hands in self-defense. 

“Don’t fight,” Jeongin warns them as he brings in another huge bowl of chocolate-covered popcorn, Hyunjin trailing behind him. “I don’t want blood in my popcorn.”

“Does that mean blood on the carpet is okay?” Minho challenges, grabbing another handful of popcorn and raising an eyebrow.

“No blood anywhere,” Chan stresses and pushes Minho to sit on the ground on the opposite end of the couch from Seungmin. “I’m not driving anyone to a doctor on our hard-earned movie night.”

“Too bad,” Jisung sighs. He half-shuffles, half-crawls his way over to Minho and deposits himself in his lap triumphantly with the first bowl of buttered popcorn in his hands. “There should be a new rule that all late-comers will be punished.”

Chan hands the remote to Jeongin and gestures encouragingly at the TV. “They said they’d be here soon and that we should start without them—no one’s punishing anyone.”

“Too bad,” Jisung repeats to Minho in a whisper, tilting his head up to look at him. Minho’s torn between the urge to boop him on the nose or kiss the tip of it. “Imagine being able to stab Changbin every time he takes too long to shower and holds up a meeting.”

“He’d be dead by the end of the week,” Minho snickers back. He smiles innocently at Chan when he gives them a suspicious look, spreading his hands in a _‘who, me?’_ sort of way. 

He settles once the opening credits start rolling, tucking all of his limbs between Jisung’s own and resting his chin in the fluffy hair at the crown of Jisung’s head. The smell of apples tickles his nose pleasantly, reminding Minho distinctly of Hyunjin’s shampoo. (It probably _is_ Hyunjin’s shampoo. Minho steels himself for that inevitable argument the next morning.) 

Jisung is warm against his front, chest moving slowly as his breaths deepen. Minho spends the movie rubbing a thumb over their clasped hands and fighting the urge to doze off, lulled to sleep by the barely audible sound of Jisung’s breathing and the background noise of restless bodies.

+I.

Minho groans into his pillow and immediately regrets it when he feels his sinuses resonate unpleasantly. “‘Sungieeeee,” he calls, half-heartedly letting an arm flop off of his bed. “Where are youuuu?”

The door to his room creaks open slowly and Minho cranes his neck up painfully to see who it is before collapsing back into bed with another groan when he spots Changbin’s annoyed expression. “You’re not ‘Sungie,” he mutters—or tries to, as a stray dust particle makes its way down his throat somehow and provokes a coughing fit. 

“Sorry to disappoint,” Changbin says, not sounding particularly apologetic. He does hand Minho a glass of water, though, which he downs gratefully. “They just got to the building, hyung, it’s going to be a while before Jisung’s gonna be home.”

Minho just barely stops himself from groaning again. “Just shoot down the goddamn doors.”

“It’s the Museum of Fine Arts.” Changbin sounds way too amused for Minho’s entirely serious suggestion.

“I fail to see your point.”

Changbin rolls his eyes. “If you’re not going to respect the building, at least respect the art, hyung. No one wants a painting with bullet holes in it.”

“They do if it’s modern art,” Minho says. He tries to reach over and put the glass of water on his bedside table, but he stops halfway when his entire body aches in protest. He hates everything. “Binnieeeee.”

Changbin plucks the glass out of his grasp and sets it on the table with a loud clunk. “God, I don’t know how Jisung puts up with you all the time.” 

“Jisung would’ve told me to just put it on the ground,” Minho says mournfully, burrowing into his blankets. He regrets this less than a second later when he remembers how uncomfortably warm and damp it is under his covers from his fever sweats. “Changbin-ah, I feel miserable.”

“Imagine how I feel,” Changbin grumbles. Minho stares up at him pitifully until Changbin gives in, patting him on the head and tickling him once under the chin. “Just hang in there hyung, okay? A couple of hours at most.” He wisely ducks out before Minho can try throwing a fit even though all of his muscles ache and he can barely move. 

He flops over onto his side and dangles a hand over the side of the bed, partly so he can look as pathetic as he feels and partly because his limbs are only listening to about half of what he’s telling them to do. His head feels like it’s overfilled with liquid that swirls around sickeningly whenever he moves his head. He’s pretty sure he has the coordination and strength of a newly born giraffe right now.

Minho hates being sick. 

He spends an indeterminate amount of time tossing and turning on his bed, trying to find a balance between his overheated body and the too-cold air of the room. After a while, he starts getting thirsty again, but an attempt to sit up leads to his vision swimming before his eyes and his heart pounding in his ears, so he gives that up as a lost cause. If someone were to break in through the window and try to kill him, he thinks he might just let them put him out of his misery.

Minho _hates_ being sick.

This is all Jisung’s fault, too. Sure, getting up early to watch the sunrise together _sounds_ romantic theoretically, but it loses its appeal when the roof turns out to be freezing in the early hours of the morning and becomes an awful idea when Minho feels like he’s going to puke his guts out if he tries to maneuver himself into a vertical position. Jisung hadn’t even gotten to see the sunrise—he’d fallen asleep on Minho’s shoulder ten minutes after making it onto the roof and Minho didn’t have the heart to wake him up. 

After a while, he drifts off for a bit, awake and in pain one moment and blinking his eyes open blearily the next, pulled out of his sleep by the sound of the floorboard outside of his room creaking. As soon as Jisung hesitantly pokes his head in, Minho makes grabby hands at him.

“‘Sungieeee, you were gone so loooong.” Never mind the fact that he has no idea how long he was half-passed out in bed. “I’ve been so loooonely. Come over here.”

Jisung blinks in confusion. It makes Minho want to poke the ‘v’ between his eyebrows. “Have you always been like this when you’re sick?”

“I’m so insulted, Jisungie. You don’t even remember what I was like the last time I was sick?” Minho flails his hand in Jisung’s direction again and _finally,_ Jisung crosses the room and sits on the edge of his bed. A cool touch graces his forehead a second later and Jisung pulls his hand back with a hiss.

“Whoa, you’re still burning up, hyung.” Jisung returns his hand to Minho’s head a second later, gently combing through Minho’s hair. It feels so nice that Minho can’t even work up the willpower to tell him that he hasn’t washed his hair in two days because he doesn’t have the energy to stand upright for that long.

“Is that why it feels like my brain is leaking out of my ears?” Minho thinks he starts drifting off again because the next thing he knows, Jisung is getting out of bed and Minho has a moment of terror that Jisung is leaving him. “No, don’t go,” he says weakly, reaching out and clutching Jisung’s hand. “I need you.”

“I’m just turning on the light,” Jisung says gently, which is when Minho notices that there’s barely any light in the room anymore. He must’ve been asleep for longer than he thought he was. The setting sun casts long shadows into his room with its orange light and it makes Jisung look even softer than he usually does. 

“Stay.” He tugs on Jisung’s hand and drags him back to the bed, pulling him down onto the mattress and tucking him into the blankets next to Minho.

“This is disgusting,” Jisung says, wrinkling his nose. “I think I can feel your sweat.”

“Mhm.”

“You’re going to get me sick, y’know.”

“Mhm.” Actually— “It’d be karma anyway. You’re the one who got me sick.”

Jisung pulls back to look at Minho incredulously. “Excuse me? What gives you that idea?”

Minho goes to protest but then another coughing fit wracks his body. Jisung hurries to hand him the cup of water still on the table and watches him with concern as Minho downs the water gratefully. Minho clears his throat after he drains the glass, waiting cautiously for another round of coughing before attempting to speak again. “Whose idea was it to go up on the roof at five in the morning, again?”

“I _told_ you to bring a blanket, you idiot.”

Minho pauses. “No you didn’t.”

“I am 99.99999999—” Minho reaches over and slaps a hand over Jisung’s mouth, not that it does much to stop him— “percent sure that I did,” Jisung continues, muffled against Minho’s palm. “I know you get cold easily, why _wouldn’t_ I tell you to bring a blanket?”

This argument is too complicated for Minho’s snot-addled brain to make sense of. “Shut up.” He uses his leverage on Jisung’s face to slowly pull him under the covers, wrapping his limbs around Jisung’s body like a tired, drunken kraken. Jisung, thankfully, doesn’t resist, and rearranges their positions until he’s half-cradling Minho, one arm under his head and the other playing with his hair. “How did it go?” Minho asks Jisung’s chest, trying not to sneeze.

“Not too bad,” Jisung says. “Surprise, surprise, talking to Yoon Hyejin goes smoother when we’re not aiming guns at each other.”

It takes Minho a moment to realize why this information sounds off. “Changbin said you were at the Museum of Fine Arts.”

Jisung freezes for a second before resuming his petting. “Oh, uh, I meant the MFA. Yeah. Yoon Hyejin who?”

Minho tries to snort before remembering that he can’t breathe through his nose. “You’re a shit liar, Han Jisung.”

“Hey,” Jisung protests. “I’m great at lying. This is all Changbin’s fault.” 

“You can’t blame everything on Changbin, ‘Sungie.” Minho’s tried. Jisung should at least learn from his mistakes.

“I can when it _is_ his fault,” Jisung says very reasonably.

Minho lets go of the topic and closes his eyes, already almost half-asleep. He imagines Jisung meeting with Yoon Hyejin, who he’d last seen down the wrong end of a gun, dyed brown hair delicately curled and lips painted rose pink, quirked in a poisonous smirk. “Be careful, Jisung-ah,” he mumbles into the side of Jisung’s arm. “I’ll miss you if you’re gone.” 

“You know me, I’m one of the best shots among us, I can talk my way out of anything, I have the flexibility of an octopus—” 

“Jisung.” _I’ll be lonely,_ he doesn’t say, because they’ve never been the type for deep conversations and heart-felt confessions, _so lonely without you. You’re my soulmate and you saved me and I can’t always save you—_

“Yeah, okay,” Jisung says softly. He presses a kiss to Minho’s head and leaves his face there, breath gently stirring Minho’s hair. “No promises.” Minho can understand that. Jisung wouldn’t be himself otherwise. 

Minho feels himself slipping further and further into unconsciousness, eyelids glued together like honey, but before he falls asleep, he turns his face into the soft skin of Jisung’s inner elbow and mumbles, “Love you.”

He’s not awake to hear the response. 

**Author's Note:**

> changbin lied to minho because he didn’t want him to worry while he was supposed to be resting. minho gave him a talking to after he stopped feeling like his lungs were about to crawl out of his body. 
> 
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